Me and Music by Tal Babitzky

18 Jun, 2014

I compose music for 30 years now, a period during which I have written hundreds of compositions. Every day I try to allocate some time for composing music. There are fruitful times, during which I succeed generating many creations, and there are more quite times during which I am less productive.

I am a pianist, and that’s why I mainly compose while playing the piano. I usually create melody and harmony together, while melody progress dictates harmony development, and vice versa.

There are musical creations I finish within 10 minutes, so that only a final touch is required, and there are many pieces I need much more time in order to find their continuation and progress. In radical cases, couple of years can pass till a tune is finished. When I feel inspired, and I know a new musical creation is going to be born, I record a sketch (it’s so good to have an iphone), listen to it the next day and check whether it is really good. If the musical creation is finished, it enters my finished song list and waits for its turn to be performed or recorded. If there is only a good beginning, it stays there, on my mobile. I occasionally return to all my unfinished parts and try to continue them. I have tens of such unfinished compositions.

When do I compose? It can happen early in the morning, at home, it can also happen between lessons I give, or at a balance rehearsal before the show begins. Any new song I compose must be in some way different from anything I did before, although each composer has his own unique fingerprint.

The hardest thing for me to do is to give a name to a composition. It can take me hours, and I still have many parts with no name. I like to compose both instrumentals and songs. I don’t write lyrics to my songs, however I am always seeking a good lyricist.

At 16 years old I was exposed to the magic of jazz, and some years later, when I was older, I started playing and composing jazz.

I love the freedom jazz gives, the possibility to play the same melody different each time. I also like the harmonic, rhythmical and melodic wealth of jazz,the fact that it can combine other music styles, sometimes in a way that it is hard to determine the style of a creation. There are jazz musicians for whom the most important thing is improvisation. I believe that it is important to have a good melody first, and that improvisation is the development of that melody. I also like to be exposed, as a listener as well as a music player, to different music styles, and this greatly impacts my composing. For example, 10 years ago my playing with an Irish-Balkan band resulted in great parts and songs which combined that style. As a matter of fact, jazz today is a combination of many music styles from different places in the world.

On my concerts where I play my music the most difficult thing is to decide what not to play, it always takes a long time to build a set list of songs in the show because there is a difference between how much I want and can play and how long the audience can listen.

I love to record my music with the musicians in the studio. This is the most wonderful feeling in the world to hear my compositions performed by excellent musicians and each of them giving his heart to play my music.

Tal Babitzky
http://www.talbabitzky.com/